


all our bruised bodies

by pantherbeamish



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Acceptance, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Love Confessions, Mild Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:01:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27719234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pantherbeamish/pseuds/pantherbeamish
Summary: She wishes she could unearth the cold concrete to resurrect the impenetrable barricade that surrounded her heart and revert back into an impulsive, foulmouthed teenager. Times were simpler, almost four years ago. He would still play martyr, withhold his true feelings and lie to her face, but at least then she could alleviate some stifled frustration. Spit an insult, break a finger.Touka confesses. Kaneki considers.
Relationships: Kaneki Ken | Sasaki Haise & Kirishima Touka, Kaneki Ken | Sasaki Haise/Kirishima Touka
Comments: 1
Kudos: 37





	all our bruised bodies

**Author's Note:**

> i imagine a centipede inside the ear sounds similar to the noise i made upon remembering i wrote this six (6) years ago. only minor edits made to preserve the institution of time and evidence my life-long love affair with the em-dash. up to the reader to decide whether i could capture kaneki’s chaotic emotional avenues or if it just sounds like i wrote this mid-panic attack

“I—love you,” she finally concedes.

The confession hurts. It hurts because he hates himself and he would rather count the amputated fingers and toes scattered across a bloodstained checkerboard— _he would rather gouge his fucking eyes out_ —than look into hers, reddened, sparkling saline and iridescence. 

It hurts because he abandoned someone who recognized the demons of loneliness hidden behind olivine eyes and strained smiles but—for some reason he could never possibly understand—loves him—a hideous, repugnant, worthless fucking insect—anyway. 

“Touka-chan.”

He should feel happy. After all, the entire objective in abandoning her almost four years ago was ensuring her safety, protecting her from afar so there would be someone to welcome him back once he finished finding answers. And here she is, veins thrumming with warm crimson and chest trembling in erratic breath; she is alive and so beautiful.

But he cannot summon the courage to even look at her. 

Solemn, her gaze falls, trying to trace crevasses in worn concrete—distracted, ineffectual. The lines decorating her face are suddenly magnified, short stories of hardship and heartache. It hurts, watching her strength crumble because of him: a hideous, repugnant, worthless insect. But he is scared— _terrified_.

The prospect of someone loving him makes his stomach churn, bile crawl up his throat like a centipede. He is so sick—nauseous and haunted and fragmented—and he cannot give her anything she deserves. She does not deserve his tormented soul. She does not deserve the itch occupying his subconscious, annoying and manipulative and hell-bent on his suicide. She does not deserve someone plagued by descending numbers, someone debilitated by fading eyesight and agonizing migraines, someone weak enough to forget everything— _everyone_ —once important to him.

“I—uh, well, Touka-chan—I don’t think…”

Swiftly, she captures a hand subconsciously rising to touch his chin. Hers clenches tightly around his, desperately like he is threatening to disappear again at any second. She returns his hand to his side but doesn’t let go.

Her eyes are still fixated at the ground. She wishes she could unearth the cold concrete to resurrect the impenetrable barricade that surrounded her heart and revert back into an impulsive, foulmouthed teenager. Times were simpler, almost four years ago. He would still play martyr, withhold his true feelings and lie to her face, but at least then she could alleviate some stifled frustration. Spit an insult, break a finger.

But memories of exposing his most vulnerable, humiliating feature—shouting, _never come back_ —loiter, caught in the cobwebs of her mind, in places too unkind and uncomfortable to go back and dust them away. 

She cannot repeat the same mistakes that creep into the forefront of her brain at night—the same mistakes she curses herself over, sometimes for hours and sometimes in passing. 

“Please,” she whispers. “Tell me the truth. I… I think you at least owe me that.”

With the gentle breeze of her voice reaching him, a dam inside of him ruptures. The feelings he so desperately tried suppressing and the tears he didn’t realize were brimming his eyelids surge outwards in a fierce tide. He should say something. _He needs to say something_. But his throat is flooding and his body feels so cold and tears are streaming furiously down his cheeks and—

And suddenly, she ushers him into a tight embrace, pulls him out from beneath his perpetual raincloud and shelters him within her arms, engulfing him in the strong aroma of dark roast, and even though his body is shivering, he has never felt so warm. He wonders momentarily whether this warmth emanates from her frame or radiates from deeper within; she has always been fierce and passionate.

He notices a slight dampness on his shirt but when he tries to gently pry her away, she defiantly nestles her head deeper into his chest.

“It doesn’t matter who they think you are or who you say you are,” she cries and although the fabric subdues her words, the pain in her voice seeps into the deepest matrices of his bones. “Somewhere deep inside, you’re still that useless idiot who believed me about overflowing the coffee, who loves shitty classic literature nobody else can understand, and—and— _dammit Kaneki_ —you would still rather run away than stay with the people who care about you.” 

Her shoulders wrack with sobs and shudder with hiccups. 

“I—I waited for you,” she chokes out, and now that she’s admitted it, her tongue moves without inhibition. “I waited for you everyday and—and—and if you have another stupid martyr mission to run off to, at least come visit every once in a while, you piece of shit, Kaneki—” 

His insides feels riddled with small, innumerable cuts, oozing acid from each perforation. It diffuses into his bloodstream, circulates throughout his limbs, like the corrosive creature he is. It’s disgusting, really, how he could make someone so precious feel so small.

She haunted him—abysmal amethyst eyes with unbelievable sorrow—petite frame with unimaginable strength—trembling pink lips with unwavering grace, welcoming him into the café. He spent months pining after her, following a brief and impersonal first encounter. But it ignited a trail of gunpowder winding throughout his body that would detonate in the center of his chest. She stirred something awake deep within him, and he couldn’t even remember her name.

But even years prior, still a pathetic boy refusing to consume and completely ignorant about the wrongness of the world, she was beautiful. Mercurial, volatile—but beautiful. She was beautiful in a dark alleyway shoving a bloodied arm down his throat, and she was beautiful in a dark chapel arranging her bloodied mouth against the base of his throat.

Her eyes widen, crystalline amethyst trembling with uncharacteristic terror that makes his heart cease beating immediately. 

“I’m—I’m sorry,” she stammers, peeling herself away from him, frantic. “I—”

But he pulls her back into the embrace. The strength with which he clutches her is suffocating. He is suffocating her, but like hell would she sacrifice his closeness to inhale an atmosphere not designed for ghouls anyway.

“I—uh… I’m a little messed up… But if you want— _this_ … I am willing.”

Her breathing halts abruptly, body tense. The coursing of blood in her veins slows, palpitations of her heart pause, firing of her neurons cease. Every exposed inch of epithelium becomes littered in goosebumps, chills reverberate down to the marrow. Then all at once, everything resumes with renewed fervor.

Her fingers clutch at his shirt, too shaky to manage a sturdy grip, and she raises onto tiptoes to touch her forehead to his. His eyes close, mind and body exhausted. They maintain balance atop the delicate tightrope beneath them for several seconds, breathing too shaky and lungs too unreliable to trust their voices.

“I don’t know very much about this,” he admits. He rocks his forehead back and forth against hers, the morning fog of a headache beginning to cloud his mind.

“We’ll figure it out,” she whispers, afraid her voice would flee if she spoke any louder. “Come inside, Ken. It’s time to rest.”

**Author's Note:**

> twitter: @pantherbeamish  
> tumblr: pantherbeamish.tumblr.com


End file.
